The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale

Paperback | March 15, 2012

This book, now with a new preface, offers a new history of the fairy tale, revealing the creative role of periodical publication in shaping this genre. Sumpter explores the fairy tale's reinvention for (and by) diverse readerships in unexpected contexts, including debates over evolution, colonialism, socialism, gender and sexuality and decadence.

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This book, now with a new preface, offers a new history of the fairy tale, revealing the creative role of periodical publication in shaping this genre. Sumpter explores the fairy tale's reinvention for (and by) diverse readerships in unexpected contexts, including debates over evolution, colonialism, socialism, gender and sexuality and...

CAROLINE SUMPTER is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. She has written on nineteenth-century literature, science and culture in journals including Victorian Studies, Literature and History, Media History, Cultural and Social History and Nineteenth-Century Contexts.

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Table of Contents

List of IllustrationsPreface to Paperback AcknowledgementsSerializing Scheherazade: An Alternative History of the Fairy TaleMyths of Origin: Folktale Scholarship and Fictional Invention in Magazines for ChildrenScience and Superstition, Realism and Romance: Fairy Tale and Fantasy in the Adult Shilling Monthly'I wonder were the fairies Socialists?': The Politics of the Fairy Tale in the 1890s Labour Press'All art is once surface and symbol': Fairy Tales and the Fin-de-Siècle Little MagazinesConclusion: Myth in the MarketplaceNotes BibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

Short listedfor the KatharineBriggs Award 2009, the Mythopoeic Award for Myth and Fantasy Studies 2010 and2011,and for the ESSE First Book Prize 2010 'The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale fills a major gap in the study of the literary fairy tale, and it fills the gap extremely well. Sumpter has a profound understanding and comprehensive knowledge of the periodical fairy tales published in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and she provides interesting analyses of the tales as well as the social history behind them and the authors engaged in writing and editing these unusual narratives. Her work is definitely unique and will make a major contribution to our knowledge about the social history of the fairy tale.' - Professor Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota 'The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale offers an engaging, carefully researched, and lucidly written history of the relationship between the Victorian popular press, the fairy tale, and a range of publications for both children and adults - some quite surprising - that engaged this supple genre in the nineteenth century.' - Troy Boone, Nineteenth-Century Literature 'Sumpter's book is a clear, convincingly argued, and highly documented interdisciplinary study - undoubtedly an original and rich contribution to the field of Victorian studies that will prove invaluable to students and scholars who are interested in the Victorian period.' - Laurence Talairach-Vielmas, Marvels and Tales '[Sumpter's]book should draw the attention of those with interests in topics such as education, marriage and sexuality, with which the more overt issues of labor and urbanization were intimately connected...this book makes signal reading for specialists in English Literature in Transition fields.' - Benjamin J. Fisher, English Literature in Transition 'Caroline Sumpter's monograph The Victorian Press and The Fairy Tale is a fresh and inspiring example of the fruitful combination of the pespectives of folklore studies, media history and literary history.' - Kirsti Salmi-Niklander, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing 'Sumpter's book is impressive both in its overarching scope and in its focused readings of 1860s and 1890s periodicals.'- Beth Palmer, Victorian Periodicals Review 'Caroline Sumpter's The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale is a fresh and inspiring example of the fruitful combination of the perspectives of folklore studies, media history and literary history.' - Kirsti Salmi-Niklander, SHARP News 'In this exacting and compact study, Caroline Sumpter examines how nineteenth-century periodicals "reinvented" the fairy tale and, in the process, assured it a permanent role in Victorian culture... [it] should be commended not only for addressing a previous lacuna in Victorian studies, but also, and perhaps, more importantly, for the profitable connections it makes to other contemporaneous topics of study such as emergent scientific theories, labor politics, gender, and nationalism.' - Joanna Shawn Brigid O'Leary, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies